Holocaust

From 1933 to 1945 the Nazis carried out a systematic program of persecution of Jews and Judaism, culminating in the 'Final solution' adopted at Wannsee in 1942, which aimed at the physical destruction of every person who had at least one Jewish great-grandparent. The implementation of this program is often referred to as 'the Holocaust', a term which, denoting a completely burned sacrifice, suggests a particular theological interpretation. The theologically neutral Biblical Hebrew term Shoah, introduced by Raphael Lemkin in 1944, leaves open the question as to what meaning, if any, can be assigned to the event (Michael, 115).

The attitudes which enabled the Nazis to 'demonize' the Jews and thus carry out their program were already deeply embedded in the popular cultures of the nations amongst whom they operated. For so long had Christians taught that Jews were a despised people, the rejecters and killers of Christ, obdurate in their adherence to a superseded faith, that European culture was saturated with this image of the Jew. It is unique that for almost two thousand years one people has been singled out for constant and religiously sanctioned vilification through much of the 'civilized' world, Muslim as well as Christian (Rubenstein, 68).

Those Jews who found meaning in the Shoah did so, on the basis of halakha (Jewish law) as well as philosophy or theology. Many Shoah victims regarded themselves as martyrs, yielding up their lives in an act of Qiddush ha-Shem (sanctification of God's name). 'I shall be sanctified amongst the people of Israel' (Leviticus 22: 32) is interpreted in the Talmud to mean that if a Jew is forced to transgress any of the major commandments of Torah, namely idolatry, adultery/incest or murder, under pain of DEATH, he should die rather than transgress, thus sanctifying God's name.

Classical Jewish theology distinguishes between individual ...